Cinevore’s Matt Conant and Stephanie Yuhas recently co-wrote a script for the hit web series “Living in 8 Bits” for the New Jersey-based Mixed Nuts Productions. Since show-runner Michael Licisyn is one of the talented camera ops behind OverAnalyzers, the collaboration was long-overdue. Licisyn himself did final tweaks on the episode to make sure the mood, comedy, and timing matched the vibe of the series. Conant and Yuhas also assisted with the concept of another episode (which was subsequently written in its entirely by Licisyn), and one or both of them will likely be making an appearance in at least one of the episodes alongside. The shoot is set to take place in New Jersey, and in and around the Project Twenty1 headquarters in downtown Norristown, PA.

Living in 8 Bits follows the interview-style reality show format of shows like The Office, but applies it to the premise that video game logic exists in real life. Prior episodes have focused on hilarious and diverse video game topics ranging from football teams that are unstoppable when they zigzag across a field to doors that open only when shot with firearms, to the tragic consequences for main characters in shooters whose arms get stuck that way.

Originally scheduled for October 29th, the shoot has been postponed due to unseasonable weather predictions including the threat of snow (really? before Halloween?). The episodes will likely film in November and arrive on LivingIn8Bits.com sometime this winter.

In addition to the two episodes mentioned above, a collaboration on two future episodes are in planning stages as well.

For all the original Metroid fans out there, check out Mixed Nuts’ hilarious recent episode “Justin Bailey”:

With a new year comes new projects, and great news. Those of you who read our prior blog know that Project Twenty1 has been a driving force in the lives of Cinevore’s creatives in recent years.

But the other driving force always at our core, propelling everything we do: narrative fiction.

We are proud to say that in the past few months, we’ve had a number of chances to work on awesome projects with our friends at Cinemassacre. Our collaborations began with Piece of Meat in 2008, where James Rolfe was a key member of the cast and did our hilarious special blood effects.

But as awesome as the documentary projects have been, March will bring a return to fiction (kind of)! Matt Conant and Stephanie Yuhas, the brains behind Cinevore, are co-creators of Cinemassacre’s upcoming web series… (drum roll)… OverAnalyzers.

In collaboration with James Rolfe and Mike Matei, and Lee Rosenfeldt, the Cinevore team has been hard at work writing new material since November. The first half-season of the show is now wrapped and in editing. It’s hard to call the series “fiction,” hard to call it even “scripted”, but it’s also hard to call it anything else. You’ll kind of have to see it to understand, but we’re excited at the direction it’s taken, and every brain at the table brings something new and important to the project.

If you are a fan of nostalgia, pop-culture, or pop-nostalgia, there’s no way you won’t love OverAnalyzers. Expect posters, stills, and trailers coming very soon, and complete episodes starting next month on Cinemassacre.com.

With frequent updates here, of course.

To make sure you stay in the loop, subscribe to our newsletter at www.cinevore.com or “like” Cinevore Studios on Facebook!

Cinevore Studios was a Presenting Sponsor at the 5th Annual Project Twenty1 Film & Animation Festival last weekend, October 1st-3rd in Philadelphia.

What does this mean? For one thing, we got to put our logo up on the snazzy sponsor wall you see behind all those happy people in the picture. But that logo wall comes with a hefty price tag.

Yes, those of you who know us well know that the brains behind Cinevore are also the brains behind Project Twenty1. Project Twenty1 is also a large part of the reason Cinevore has not been as prolific with its film output as many other indie film groups in Philly.

But if you were at the event, you saw why it is so important to us. Yes, at our hearts, we are filmmakers. But we are also cinephiles, people with a genuine love for film, for filmmaking, and for the passion and connection to other people that film can evoke. That is why presenting Project Twenty1 every year is so important to us. This year, P21 presented nearly 100 films, most of them World Premieres, and received major press coverage across all forms of media – web, print, radio, and TV. And the electricity at the events was palpable, above and beyond any prior year.

Is Project Twenty1’s growth directly related to Cinevore’s contributions? Well, let’s look at it this way. In 2006, the year Project Twenty1 began, Cinevore founder Matt Conant’s gross income (that’s GROSS, people… more than half of it went towards paying crew and equipment) came in just under $80,000. Each year since, the festival grew slightly, adding programming, events, and services, for the benefit of our community, and each year took up even more of his time. In 2010, Matt’s gross income? $9,142.50. Again, that’s gross, not net (and also gross, because it causes him to wretch when he thinks about it). To say that he is poor now is a drastic understatement. It’s tough to make films with $2,000 in the bank and a $1,500 mortgage every month, even WITH roommates.

One day, perhaps, a larger company will come along to take some of the financial and temporal burden of the festival off Cinevore’s shoulders (hint hint, large companies), and with such sponsorship will come the ability for P21 to pay modest salaries for some administrative positions (which are YEAR ROUND tasks, by the way) and for god’s sake, HEALTHCARE. This would also allow Cinevore to put a little more time back into its own filmmaking projects, and produce perhaps more than one short film every year, as we seem to be averaging.

Until the day that mythical Presenting Sponsor or Sponsors come along, we feel it is our solemn duty to keep this festival and organization running, out of our own sweat, tears, and yes, sometimes actual blood. And of course, all our money that would otherwise go to our own films. Yet there is an intense pride that the festival also gives us, that sort of underdog spirit that comes from doing anything so huge on such a grass-roots level. We are intensely proud of this festival we’ve built from scratch in five years with little to no financial support, and the fact that we have one of the strongest festivals in the city – in terms of programming, quality, and most of all, community – feels like our own little indie coup. Just check out the Red Carpet pictures and see! We’ve seen organizations with far more substantial resources throw crappy parties, judiciously crop their pictures to make their crowds look larger than they are, and brag about their awesome events to no end. And they can get away with it, because often, nobody was actually there to prove them wrong.

This year, thanks to a ton of donated time and resources on our part, some incredible volunteers, and all our filmmakers and supporters, Project Twenty1 had no excuses, and all the comments we’ve gotten across the board were that we hit one out of the park.

As for doing more film work of our own, this is already in the planning stages. We have one short slated for production in one day this fall, and we intend to be fundraising for the feature-length neo-noir thriller “Controls” through the fall and winter with the intent to enter production in the next year.

Whether we are still carrying the weight of the festival on our shoulders or not.

For those wondering “where Cinevore is,” we never left. We’re buried in paperwork, we’re tired, and we’re hungry, but we’re stubborn as all hell and as devoted as ever to bringing you some of the most original and entertaining films you’ll ever see.

This can only really go one of two ways; this will be an against-all-odds Cinderella story or a cautionary tale of a few starry-eyed filmmakers completely crashing and burning for their art. Either way, we thank our core group of supporters and welcome you along for the ride.

James Rolfe has posted not only The Dragon in my Dreams, but also footage from our location tour of the Night of the Living Dead cemetery, and the Dawn of the Dead mall, both available for viewing on Cinemassacre’s site. It was pretty cool to be standing on the places where such classics were shot. We even enjoyed geeking out spending literally HOURS trying to find the EXACT spot where Tom Savini’s character dies in DOTD, to no avail.

Next up: interviews with George “The Animal” Steele, several cast and crew members of NOTLD, Burt I. Gordon, and Tom Savini himself! So keep your eyes open. In the meantime, having now seen “Inception,” we’re able to finish the final touches on our feature-length “Controls” script, without worry that it will be the exact same film. A collective sigh of relief over here, that’s for sure.

James Rolfe has uploaded his latest film, a retrospective on his inspiration to become a filmmaker, aptly titled The Dragon in My Dreams. It also happens to be James’ 300th Film, and it lands just as he turns 30. For those counting, that’s as though he made 10 films a year starting the day he was born. Feel unproductive yet? We sure do.

Anyway, it is an extremely touching and personal film, and Cinevore’s Matt Conant did some camerawork for it. So that’s two reasons to enjoy.

So, the last couple of months have brought some cool work with our friends over at Cinemassacre.

We recently contributed some camera work to James Rolfe’s 300th film, a surprisingly touching retrospective on James’s career focusing on one specific incident from his childhood. Making the film, even though it was only a one day shoot, contained more twists and turns than it had any right to, but we’ll explain more once James officially posts it to Cinemassacre in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime, he’s posted his outtakes from Piece of Meat on his site, so go check ’em out if it’s been a while!

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Welcome to Cinevore's blog. We hope to have this more fully integrated into the website soon, so that it evokes less a sense of "eww" than its current incarnation. Please bear with us as we attempt to program a computer.